The intervention in Venezuela occurred because Chavez was ordering hundreds of thousands of child soldiers to attack Columbia Hoping that the Colombians wouldn’t kill them because they were Actually decent people.
I believe that you are confusing Chávez´s FAN (
Fuerza Armada Nacional-National Armed Forces a.k.a. Venezuela´s Army) with FARC (
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia a.k.a. a colombian guerrilla movement that was supposedly allied with and supported by Chávez ). Also, WHAT? Hundreds of Thousands of Children? Really, what is your source?
Anyway, if I remember correctly, the principal reason for intervention that Powell did gave in his speech to the U.N. Security Council was the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country after Venezuela´s civil society, organized in the
Coordinadora Democrática, unleashed a
massive indefinite general strike that paralyzed all sectors of the national economy, which combined with the war and subsequent repression, led the country to total collapse. As a consecuence, many Venezuelans were forced to become refugees and cross borders, even if it involved going through a literal battlefield like for those who lived in the frontier with Colombia. Maybe, that is where you got the idea of "hundreds of thousands".
Finally, there is the fact that, as the later scandals in Colombia have revealed, trying to use child soldiers
(Instead of arming the Circulos Bolivarianos and Pre-military Instruction High School Students to implement a Venezuelan Volksstrum/Bolivarian Guerrilla like in OTL) would not have worked because the colombians would have bombed them anyway. They did have a lot of problems with collateral damage without any Venezuelan meddling OTL, and the child soldiers who were part of the ELN and FARC were treated like any other combatant even before they allied with Chávez.
Chavez wouldn't had ousted and enforced go exile to Cuba rest of his life. Chavez might had been president until his death or if not ousted at some point anyway.
That has no basis in reality (unless Chávez´s death isn´t natural): that madman might have been charismatic, a you-love-or-hate-him figure before the war, but he couldn´t by President-For-Life for the simple reason that the Venezuelan Constitution forbids it: Even the spurius, so-called Constitution of 1999
(repealed after the intervention by the interim government) that he made in his image and likeness, prohibited having more than one re-election.
But what if Hugo Chavis hadn't invaded what would south American politics look like today how would the two countries look with out that war?
For Colombia, I believe that without the prestige given to him by fighting and winning the war with Venezuela (and destroying the Marxist guerrillas in the process), Alvaro Uribe would only have been a one-term, forgettable president like his predecesors instead of
"Colombia´s Caudillo". OTL Uribe used the popularity he got for
"bringing democratic security and peace to Colombia" to reform the Constitution to get indefinite re-elections, and the votes to win those elections. Heck,
"el Paisa" probably would be still President today if he hadn´t died before his third re-election.
For Venezuela, well, I was only 8 years old (and living in Spain) during the war, but my father, family and friends were there, so I got a direct source about life in the so-called
"Fifth Republic" and how it could have developed. Here are some ideas:
- It would be absolutely polarized. I know it is hard to imagine it, but before the war, Chávez was so popular that he was able to return back to power from a coup that same year. Of course, people already knew that he once attempted a military coup, and the media doubted all the time about his sanity, but then, the President who he tried to oust was so hated that he got impeached by his own party afterwards, with Chávez being seen as a hero of the people who took responsability when the politicians did not, while the majority thought that all that talk about "He is crazy and we got doctors to prove it" was just dirty propaganda made by his political enemies. No matter how many complaints the opposition made, a considerable number of Venezuelans not only ignored them, but believed that Chávez was some kind of reedemer that would bring to the people their fair share of the oil wealth, and a participatory democracy free from elitism and corruption. On the other side, the opposition believed him to be the Antichrist: Fidel Castro himself (For them, the Antichrist and Castro have always been one and the same), so a murderous dictator, a Cold War commie stereotype who wanted to steal all private property from the owners, and the children from their parents, while making the country a puppet of Cuba. Simply, by 2002, the country was divided between two sides who saw each other as the enemy, in some cases having only that hate in common. Today´s political consensus in Venezuela is basically built around a "Never Again" which in turn is the result of the War and its consecuences, combined with the U.S. Intervention making clear what side won. And even then, there are still guerrilla groups in the mountains fighting "for the bolivarian cause". Without the War and the intervention, that conflict is not going to be solved until one side concedes defeat or the country gets destroyed, whatever happens first. It all depends of how Chávez acts, really: If he acts like he did before April 2002, it is possible that he could remain in power until a recall referendum (as stipulated by his own Constitution) could be called. If he acts like he did after he got back into power (OOC: I am going with the idea that something happened during the April coup that made Chávez crazy enough to believe that invading Colombia to 'restore power to the people' was a good idea), then all bets are off: It could end with a war against another country (like Guyana or Brazil), a general strike, another coup, or something worse...
- It would be less violent, even more stable. Yeah, it may sounds like a paradox after what I said above, but hear me out: Today, more than fifteen years after the Intervention and the approval of the Plan Venezuela, we look more like Pre-War Colombia or Afghanistan than Pre-War Venezuela. As one of the unfinished wars of the United States of America, we still got U.S. troops helping us against the guerrillas chavistas, the narcos, the narco-guerrillas chavistas, the colombian groups that came here hiding from Uribe, the paramilitaries from Colombia and Venezuela, etc... I'm not ungrateful, I'm sure it would be worse if they weren't here (even if I am concerned about all those allegations of sexual abuse in the military bases), but I can't help remembering that those groups only came to be because of the collapse generated by the war and the subsequent intervention. If there is no War, and no collapse, maybe the rise of armed groups could have been avoided... if Chávez do not end up supporting the colombian ones like he did OTL.
- The Economy... would be difficult to predict. On one hand, the Economy from 1999 until 2002 was better than before, there was less inflation, less poverty, and Chávez´s diplomatic moves to increase the price of oil (and with it Venezuela´s revenue) were working. On the other, Chávez was pissing off the bussiness and the worker unions AT THE SAME TIME. And of course, how we could forget that feud with the executives of PDVSA, Venezuela´s oil company? Ultimately, while Venezuela should be richer thanks to no War, no guerrillas, no collapse, and more oil revenue, there is the fact that Chávez was in a crash collision with all the shakers and movers of the Venezuelan economý, and conflict is not good for bussiness.
With respect to the continent, there was the feeling back in 2001 that some kind of turn to the left was starting to be felt in the region, with Chávez being the trend starter. However, the left (and the idea of a Constituent Assembly to solve national problems) was hit hard after what happened in Venezuela, and only recovered after the Great Recession in 2009, making the Pink Tide of the 2010's possible. Maybe the Pink Tide starts earlier?
OOC: I think a war when Uribe bombed a FARC camp in Ecuador in 2008 is more likely. Chavez suffered a coup in April 2002, and a few months after a coup seems like a bad idea to start a war of agression
OOC: You´re right. Not only is more likely, is practically the only moment were it was possible that Chávez declared war, and that was only if Ecuador did the same (or Colombia bombed Venezuelan territory for
ANY reason). In 2002, and without a real
Casus Belli? Impossible. First, 2002 Chávez was not 2005-6 Chávez
(when he declared himself and his revolution socialist, and called Bush the Devil) or 2008 Chávez
(when he warned Colombia that it would be a "cause for war" if its forces struck inside Venezuelan territory as they did in Ecuador) or the
Axis of Evil´s member Chávez imagined by many. Compared with what he became after, he was a moderate, more akin to Peru´s Ollanta Humala in 2011 (In Venezuela, we joked that after trying to imitate current Chávez in 2006, in 2011 he was imitating 1999 Chávez) and after his return to power in April 13 2002, he talked about reconciliation and dialogue between Venezuelans. (However, the opposition hated him -and still does- with a passion that would put U.S. Republican hate for Obama to shame, being obsessed with removing him from power by any way, legal or not) . Second, as juanml82 said, Chávez suffered a coup in April 2002 and in December 2002 he was going to suffer a second attempt in the form of the infamous
indefinite general strike/oil strike. In fact, the elections in Colombia were only a month after the April 11 coup. Simply, Venezuela is too unstable and polarized to go to war in 2002, much less with a casus belli so flimsy . Also, going to war with Colombia as the agressor is practically giving in a golden plate (with a beautiful U.N. approved ribbon) an excuse to its ally/puppet master the "Empire" (U.S.A.) to freedomize you in the name of protecting
the oil Democracy. The only way for Chávez to do that is for him to be insane (or sure that the Russians and Chinese are willing to risk World War III to save him, something that in 2002 was not possible
AT ALL).